This project develops and applies a new geometry of biological shape that gives a natural and efficient description to a variety of biological objects at vastly differing levels: chromosomes, cells, organs, organisms. Applications are to (1) automation of shape analysis for diagnosis and taxonomy, (2) the psychology and neurophysiology of shape processes in vision and (3) the description and understanding of organ and organismic development. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Nagel, R. N. and Blum, H.; A Symmetric Axis Basis for Object Recognition and Description. Proc. of IEEE Meeting on Decision and Control, pp. 168-170, 1976. Blum, H. and Nagel, R.: Shape description using weighted symmetric axis features. Proc. IEEE Computer Society Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, pp. 203-215, Troy, N. Y., June 1977.